The Ellen DeGeneres Show is under investigation over allegations of a toxic workplace

[TMC]

https://variety.com/2020/tv/news/ell...on-1234717494/

WarnerMedia has launched an investigation into Ellen DeGeneres' daytime talk show's workplace culture following Buzzfeed's report two weeks ago in which current and former staffers described facing racism, fear and intimidation. "Executives from show producer Telepictures and distributor Warner Bros. Television sent a memo to staffers last week saying they have engaged WBTV-owner WarnerMedia’s employee relations group and a third party firm, who will interview current and former staffers about their experiences on set," reports Variety, which in April reported of Ellen's poor treatment of legacy employees in wake of the pandemic. Ellen executive producers Ed Glavin, Andy Lassner and Mary Connelly responded to Buzzfeed in its story, saying in a statement: “We are truly heartbroken and sorry to learn that even one person in our production family has had a negative experience. It’s not who we are and not who we strive to be, and not the mission Ellen has set for us. For the record, the day to day responsibility of the Ellen show is completely on us. We take all of this very seriously and we realize, as many in the world are learning, that we need to do better, are committed to do better, and we will do better.”

[GentlemanJim]

This story has many in-line links to supporting allegations, such as her former body guard, etc

https://www.foxnews.com/entertainmen...-end-tv-career

Two sides I see to this. Many of her defenders point out that other celebrities are well known to be cold and distant from those not in their inner circle. I'm sure this is true.

But, in counterpoint to that, DeGeneres has built her stock in trade projecting a "warm-n-fuzzy" persona. The Hypocrisy might prove fatal.

Could this be like the "LeRosa" event in Arthur Godfrey's career?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arthur...ind_the_scenes

[TMC]

Ellen DeGeneres is "sorry" over Ellen's toxic workplace culture -- one executive producer to exit

In an emotional letter sent to her staff, DeGeneres took responsibility over the toxic workplace allegations reported earlier this month by Buzzfeed and promised to correct the problems. “That will now change and I’m committed to ensuring this does not happen again," she said in the letter. The Hollywood Reporter reports that Ed Glavin, who serves as executive producer along with Mary Connelly and Andy Lassner, is "among those who will be let go." “Once he’s out, it will be like a new day,” a source close to the show, one of two who claim DeGeneres was largely kept shielded from Glavin’s day-to-day handling or mishandling of the staff, told The Hollywood Reporter, which adds: "Others are expected to be out as well." Last week, WarnerMedia announced an investigation into Ellen's workplace culture. "Hey everybody – it’s Ellen," DeGeneres began her letter. "On day one of our show, I told everyone in our first meeting that The Ellen DeGeneres Show would be a place of happiness – no one would ever raise their voice, and everyone would be treated with respect. Obviously, something changed, and I am disappointed to learn that this has not been the case. And for that, I am sorry. Anyone who knows me knows it’s the opposite of what I believe and what I hoped for our show. I could not have the success I’ve had without all of your contributions. My name is on the show and everything we do and I take responsibility for that. Alongside Warner Bros, we immediately began an internal investigation and we are taking steps, together, to correct the issues. As we’ve grown exponentially, I’ve not been able to stay on top of everything and relied on others to do their jobs as they knew I’d want them done. Clearly some didn’t. That will now change and I’m committed to ensuring this does not happen again. I’m also learning that people who work with me and for me are speaking on my behalf and misrepresenting who I am and that has to stop. As someone who was judged and nearly lost everything for just being who I am, I truly understand and have deep compassion for those being looked at differently, or treated unfairly, not equal, or – worse – disregarded. To think that any one of you felt that way is awful to me. It’s been way too long, but we’re finally having conversations about fairness and justice. We all have to be more mindful about the way our words and actions affect others, and I’m glad the issues at our show were brought to my attention. I promise to do my part in continuing to push myself and everyone around me to learn and grow. It’s important to me and to Warner Bros. that everyone who has something to say can speak up and feels safe doing so. I am so proud of the work we do and the fun and joy we all help put out in the world. I want everyone at home to love our show and I want everyone who makes it to love working on it. Again, I’m so sorry to anyone who didn’t have that experience. If not for COVID, I’d have done this in person, and I can’t wait to be back on our stage and see you all then. Stay safe and healthy. Love, Ellen."

Australian TV executive recalls a bizarre experience with Ellen staffers

In the wake of toxic workplace allegations on The Ellen DeGeneres Show, Australia’s Today show executive Neil Breen recalled an unusual experience when one of his reporters, Richard Wilkins, prepared to interview Ellen DeGeneres. “The producer called us aside and said, 'Now Neil, no one is to talk to Ellen. You don’t talk to her, you don’t approach her, you don’t look at her. She’ll come in, she’ll sit down, she’ll talk to Richard and then Ellen will leave,'" recalled Breen, who didn't actually talk to DeGeneres himself. He added: “I have no idea whether she’s a nice person or not, I wouldn’t have a clue. But I can tell you the people who work with her walked on eggshells the whole time. We’re there to do an interview to promote what she’s doing, but you can’t look at her? Someone get real.”

Brad Garrett says Ellen DeGeneres' mistreatment of staff is "common knowledge"

The comedic actor, who appeared on Ellen six times between 2004 and 2007, tweeted in response to DeGeneres apologizing to her staff Thursday over its toxic workplace: "Sorry but it comes from the top ⁦@TheEllenShow. Know more than one who were treated horribly by her. Common knowledge."

[TMC]

Ellen and TMZ on TV reveal daytime TV's dark side: Both are part of Telepictures, which has a history of shows with toxic workplaces dating back to Rosie

The Hollywood Reporter points out that several key figures in the The Ellen DeGeneres Show and TMZ toxic workplace scandals have a long history with the production company Telepictures. "To the average person, the two workplaces could seem unrelated. But Ellen and TMZ both end in credits that feature a twirling 'T' — for Telepictures, the syndication giant that produces both, plus Extra, The Real and Judge Mathis, among many others," report The Hollywood Reporter's Katie Kilkenny and Seth Abramovitch. "A Hollywood Reporter investigation into Telepictures, a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Television, reveals it to be a repeat offender when it comes to breaches of professional protocol. According to interviews with more than two dozen current and former Telepictures employees — both at the studio and on its shows — the culture, which once typified the rough-and-tumble world of syndicated TV, has simply not kept in step with the rapidly changing times. It’s a troubling pattern that stretches as far back as its first daytime megahit, The Rosie O’Donnell Show, which ran in syndication from 1996 to 2002. Several key figures in the Ellen and TMZ affairs were executives on Rosie and were later shuffled around among other Telepictures productions — like The Bonnie Hunt Show and The Tyra Banks Show — where similar problems arose, according to multiple people with knowledge of the situations. One of the original Rosie producers, Andy Lassner, remains at Ellen as an executive producer." As one former Telepictures producer put it: "What you had at Ellen are showrunners who came from notoriously toxic environments, so what resulted was the worst of all those worlds. A place where the EPs cater to the host, restrict virtually every other staffer’s access to the host, and then make you work 80- to 90-hour weeks almost for sport 'because that’s what they had to do.'" Earlier this summer, The Real co-host Amanda Seales hinted at a toxic culture when she quit after six months, saying "the people at the top are not respecting the necessity for Black voices to be at the top, too." In a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, WarnerMedia says: "We are hopeful that our industry has finally reached a turning point and recognizes that behavior that may have been tolerated decades ago simply can no longer be accepted. To that end, we take all allegations of abuse or discrimination seriously, regardless of time frame, and will investigate these claims."

[TMC]

The Ellen DeGeneres Show's premiere week ratings plummeted 38% following toxic workplace scandal

USA Today wonders if Ellen DeGeneres is losing fans in wake of her summer scandal. "The syndicated daytime talk show averaged 1.66 million viewers for the week of Sept. 21, when she addressed the issues on air, down from 2.67 million for the opening week of Sept. 9, 2019, according to the first national Nielsen figures out Tuesday for same-day viewing," reports USA Today's Gary Levin. "And while it's true that many talk shows are down amid overall declines in broadcast television, Ellen had by far the sharpest drop. Among rivals, The Kelly Clarkson Show fell 19% from last year, Dr. Phil was off 18%, Wendy Williams dropped 24% and Dr. Oz was down 17% in early weeks of their seasons. But there were outliers, too: Live With Kelly and Ryan gained 2% over last year, averaging 2.57 million viewers; Tamron Hall was up 4% to 1.2 million (and renewed for a third season Tuesday); and Rachael Ray fell just 5%. "

[mets82]

I was surprised to hear about the allegations regarding Ellen. I was thought she was good person and very nice. Little did I know. Her show being down in the ratings doesn't surprise. What surprises me is that all the other talk shows are down. Sports is down, talk shows are down. You would think people would want to watch sports and/or talk shows considering how we didn't have anything for months.

[TMC]

Report: The Ellen DeGeneres Show is struggling to book A-list guests and losing advertisers and viewers following its toxic workplace scandal

Buzzfeed News' Krystie Lee Yandoli, who broke the story of Ellen's workplace harassment scandal over the summer, reports that employees told her the show is "losing advertisers, struggling to book A-list celebrities, and suffering a dip in ratings during what is usually the busiest time of year." The employees say it isn't the pandemic that has caused a drop in show's sponsors and advertisers. "In November 2019, the Ellen Show Instagram account featured 12 sponsored posts from eight different brands; in November 2020, the show's Instagram featured just six sponsored posts from two different brands: Hologic, a medical device company focusing on women's health, and Hyundai, which also sponsored this year's '12 Days of Giveaways,'" reports Yandoli. "The month of December is usually one of The Ellen Show’s busiest and most successful times of the year because of the '12 Days of Giveaways' segments that run on 12 episodes, promoting brands whose products are gifted to audience members. This year, the show is specifically giving gifts to frontline workers, first responders, medical workers, and families impacted by COVID-19. But a current employee said that even though the show recently instituted a small in-studio audience again, this year’s gifts aren’t on par with what it usually delivers." One employee also told her the show is struggling to book talent. "Earlier in the season, the team was encouraged to pitch ideas to the talent-booking team in a videoconference because the show was having a difficult time securing its usual A-list celebrities," reports Yandoli. Representatives for Warner Bros. declined to comment, but a source told her “advertising revenue for daytime TV has been impacted across the board” and “everything to do with the business climate” can be attributed to the coronavirus pandemic.

[TMC]

Jimmy Kimmel failed to tackle Ellen DeGeneres toxic workplace scandal during their in-person interview

Last night's Jimmy Kimmel Live! marked DeGeneres' first major sit-down interview since last summer's toxic workplace scandal. Kimmel and Ellen are longtime friends, so it isn't surprising that he didn't bring it up. But by not mentioning the controversy, Kimmel essentially gave Ellen a pass, says Matt Wilstein. "Hardly the toughest interviewer in the mediasphere, Kimmel was especially soft on DeGeneres, who is attempting some image rehab ahead of the premiere of her new HBO Max furniture show, Ellen’s Next Great Designer," he said. "They joked about smoking 'wacky-tobacky' and even played a quick round of 'Who’s High?' with pedestrians on Hollywood Boulevard. After all of that silliness, it would not have been easy to pivot into the serious allegations against her guest. And Kimmel didn’t try. Instead, he set DeGeneres up for a simultaneously endearing, humorous and concerning story about how she had to drive her wife Portia de Rossi to the emergency room for an appendectomy while very stoned." Wilstein added: "Now, obviously, Kimmel—who’s hosting DeGeneres’ buddy George W. Bush on his show this Wednesday night—is not Anderson Cooper or Oprah Winfrey. And a late-night comedy show is not necessarily the best place for DeGeneres to address the allegations, which included sexual misconduct by her top producers and the host herself accused of secretly being 'one of the meanest people alive.' But for it to not even come up reveals just how much celebrities tend to give their celebrity friends cover when low-level staffers suffer abuse. And it also raises the question of whether DeGeneres only agreed to the appearance under the condition that her scandal would be ignored—or if she just knew it would be."

[JamesG]

"The Ellen DeGeneres Show" To End after 19 Seasons
by Nellie Andreeva
May 12, 2021


At the end of a rocky 2020-21 season, following a toxic workplace environment controversy and amid declining ratings, Ellen DeGeneres is ending her daytime talk show.

DeGeneres’ current contract takes "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" through the upcoming 2021-2022 season, the show’s 19th, and it will now be the program’s final chapter



The Daily Mail, which broke the news early Wednesday morning, thwarted DeGeneres’ and the show’s producer Warner Bros.’ plans of announcing the news on their own terms.

DeGeneres will speak about the pending end of her daytime talker in the opening monologue she will be taping later today.

https://deadline.com/2021/05/the-ell...ns-1234754647/

[TMC]

Ellen DeGeneres' brand began crumbling long before toxic workplace scandal and Dakota Johnson

DeGeneres' announcement Wednesday that she planned to end her show in 2022 after 19 years prompted many Twitter users to thank Dakota Johnson with memes from her viral November 2019 Ellen appearance for throwing the "first brick" in exposing the daytime talk show host. They attribute that interview for paving the way for current and former The Ellen DeGeneres Show employees coming forward last summer with allegations of a toxic workplace. But as Laura Bradley points out, DeGeneres' announcement was the culmination of years of rumblings of DeGeneres being a not-so-nice person -- in contrast to her "Be Kind" brand. "The rumblings from The Ellen DeGeneres Show first began back in 2014 when, as The Daily Beast reported, former Ellen head writer Karen Kilgariff shared with Marc Maron 'that she was fired from the show after refusing to cross the picket line during the 2008 writers’ strike. DeGeneres has allegedly not spoken to Kilgariff since,'" says Bradley. Bradley also notes that "DeGeneres’ brand already had a few blemishes by the time her staffers began speaking out—and even before that Johnson bit went awry in late 2019. In January of that year, DeGeneres had tried to help Kevin Hart rehabilitate his reputation after his past homophobic tweets had resurfaced online. Hart initially doubled down rather than apologize, although he would later issue a mea culpa when he announced that he was stepping down from the gig.) Throughout their interview, DeGeneres defended Hart and even allowed him to argue that he’d repeatedly apologized for the tweets, a claim that did not stand up to scrutiny. She further revealed that she had personally called the Academy to lobby for his reinstatement....It was both jarring and disheartening to see DeGeneres—a trailblazer for queer people on screen who once lost her job after coming out—working so hard to help Hart evade accountability for his homophobic remarks. But it wouldn’t be the last vexing choice she’d make that year. Months later, in October, she waved away criticism for palling around with George W. Bush at a football game."

ALSO:

• Former Ellen staffers respond to Ellen DeGeneres' announcement, calling it "consequence culture": "Former employees of The Ellen Show say they’re glad the once-beloved pillar of daytime television taking her show off the air, the ultimate consequence of being the face and leader of a TV show where they say misconduct ran rampant behind the scenes for years," writes Buzzfeed's Krystie Lee Yandoli, who first reported on Ellen's toxic workplace last summer. As one ex-employee tells her: “I think this is ‘consequence culture.’ People are like, ‘cancel culture,’ but no, this is a consequence of somebody and an institution that got away with fostering a super unhealthy and toxic work environment for a really long time. I think they did all the right things to make it look like they were making changes — they fired some people, they gave tWitch an executive producer position because they didn't have a lot of diversity, and they made it look like they did all the right things, but it still wasn't enough. It all comes out in the wash at the end, and you realize this is really what she deserves and what the show deserves.” Another former employee added: “I think that she only came back to this past season because she probably had to (in order) to save face. The show took a tank. The ratings tanked for a lot of reasons — we had a pandemic — but they also tanked because she's unlikeable now and it definitely permeated the culture of how people feel about Ellen.”
• Watch Ellen DeGeneres announce she's ending her talk show: “You may wonder why I’ve decided to end after 19 seasons," an emotional DeGeneres told her virtual audience in her pre-taped monologue for Thursday's show. "The truth is, I always trust my instincts. My instinct told me it’s time. As a comedian, I have always understood the importance of… timing. And in all seriousness, I truly have felt like next season was the right time to end this amazing chapter.”
• DeGeneres ending shows that certain allegations do have consequences: "As the unspoken code of silence around long-rumored tyrants of Hollywood begins to break, it’s unclear if DeGeneres is bowing out gracefully to avoid increased scrutiny or retreating in shame because of it," says Jude Dry. "No matter how many unrelated reasons she cites for ending the show — needing a creative challenge, her contract ending, more time for animal rights work — it’s clear she’s not ending her Emmy-winning run on a resounding high note." Dry adds: "The true test for DeGeneres will be in how her future endeavors fare. The perhaps not-so-kind-after-all comedian may not be playing any more lovable forgetful fish anytime soon; and a return to her sitcom days doesn’t seem to interest her. Her 2018 Netflix stand-up special Relatable revealed she can still kill a joke onstage, even if the title ended up being more ironic than she intended. But barring any deeper self-reflection — a pretty glaring omission from her THR interview — it will be hard for DeGeneres to bounce back anytime soon. Until she’s ready to embrace her darker side in her comedy, Ellen as we know her may be gone for good."
• DeGeneres' claim that her show's toxic workplace scandal had nothing to do with ending her show is funny: "The idea that we’re supposed to just believe that it was because her contract was ending and that she doesn’t feel challenged?" says Rachel Leishman. "Especially after she had her show going on during the pandemic when she’d make producer Andy Lassner sit outside her house and do wild things the entire time? I’m sure there is truth in that Ellen DeGeneres wanted out of the show. I’m sure that her contract is coming to an end. But brushing off the concept of the show ending because of what happened last year doesn’t really sit well with me. Sure, she might not have wanted to come back to the show after all of that, but also, if she was under contract, it might not have been her choice. Whatever is or isn’t happening behind the scenes, The Ellen DeGeneres Show is over, and with that has come a new resurgence of the Dakota Johnson meme and I, for one, am grateful for that."
• DeGeneres' ending her show signifies how much celebrity culture has shifted: "DeGeneres hinged her reputation on the motto 'be kind' – a bland niceness that attracted nearly every A-lister to her couch at least once and offered a sheen of winsome celebrity relatability to mass audiences before social media democratized star relationships with their fans, and peppered the talkshow genre with viral video-worthy games (to which Jimmy Fallon’s celebrity carnival Tonight Show owes a great debt)," says Adrian Horton. "But the niceness brand has sputtered out following a Buzzfeed exposé into alleged sexual harassment, racial insensitivity and bullying behind the scenes (based on interviews with 36 former staffers), as well as general impatience with out-of-touch celebrity culture hastened by the pandemic. In other words, it was high time for Ellen to go. I can’t comment on how challenged Ellen personally feels in hosting the show after 3,000 episodes and a truly impressive 2,400 celebrity interviews (imagine what that ubiquity of surface niceness does to your brain). But it does seem very clear that the flat blandness of 'be kind' could not ride out the turbulence of the past year – the Buzzfeed report, the subsequent dismissal of three top producers, the larger post-#MeToo and Black Live Matter-propelled cultural reckoning over toxic workplaces, and the general disdain for faux platitudes from out-of-touch, insulated celebrities."
• See a chart showing The Ellen DeGeneres Show losing more than half her viewership since 2014

Ellen DeGeneres thinks news of her toxic workplace scandal was "too orchestrated" and "very misogynistic"

In an interview with Today's Savannah Guthrie, DeGeneres continued to insist she isn't ending her show because of last summer's toxic workplace scandal -- though "I really did think about not coming back because…it was devastating." DeGeneres repeated that "If it was why I was quitting, I would have not come back this year." Guthrie asked DeGeneres if she thought she was being "canceled." “I really didn’t understand it," said DeGeneres. "I still don’t understand it. It was too orchestrated. It was too coordinated. People get picked on, but for four months straight for me. And then for me to read in the press about a toxic work environment, when all I’ve ever heard from every guest that comes on the show is what a happy atmosphere this is and what a happy place this is. I don’t know how I could have known when there’s 255 employees here and there are a lot of different buildings, unless I literally stay here until the last person goes home at night. It is my name on the show, so clearly it affects me and I have to be the one to stand up and say, ‘This can’t be tolerated.’ But I do wish somebody would have come to me and said, ‘Hey, something’s going on that you should know about.' She added: "How can I be an example of strength and perseverance and power if I give up and run away?” she said. “And so, it really is one of the reasons I came back. I worked really hard on myself. And also, I have to say if nobody else is saying it, it was really interesting because I’m a woman, and it did feel very misogynistic.”

ALSO:

• Ellen DeGeneres tells Oprah Winfrey "I got emotional because it's real now": "I feel like it's the right thing to do, but I'm charged. It's a weird thing to announce that I'm stopping," DeGeneres said while discussing her decision to end her show with Winfrey, her guest on Thursday's show. Winfrey recalled being in the same position when she ended her show a decade ago after 25 seasons. "I know what those feelings are. I also know the feelings leading up to it," Winfrey said. "So hearing you say and announcing to the world that it was your instinct and that you thought long and hard about it because anybody would know that for something that is as powerful as this show is in other people's lives, that you would not take that lightly and that the coming to the realization that now it is time is a process." Winfrey also told DeGeneres what she did and didn't miss about her show. “I miss the audience the most,” Winfrey said. “What I didn’t miss, I’ll tell you what I didn’t miss and when I knew, when I started to feel like it’s time for me to end, I was doing a makeover show. We did a lot of makeovers over the years. And I just thought, there’s not another way I can ask somebody, ‘What mascara are you wearing?” There’s not another way I can say, ‘What color is that eyeshadow you are using?’ There wasn’t another way I could do that and be honest, authentic with myself. And so I thought, time to start thinking about moving in another direction.”
• With her Today show comments, Ellen DeGeneres continues to distance herself from Ellen DeGeneres
• It took less than 24 hours for DeGeneres to start talking about cancel culture

If Ellen DeGeneres is going to use conspiracy-theory terms like “orchestrated” and “coordinated,” it might be helpful if she clarified her own accusations

"What exactly was orchestrated and coordinated?" asks Mary McNamara of DeGeneres' Today interview with Savannah Guthrie. "The accusations? And, more important, by whom? A few disgruntled employees? Twitter trolls? Audience members who were not chosen to compete for cash? I certainly hope she is not blaming the media, because a Warner Bros investigation found enough justification in early reports by Buzzfeed to fire the aforementioned executive producers. As she has said before, DeGeneres told Guthrie that she had no idea staff members were unhappy because the A-list guests always seemed quite pleased and the show had 255 employees who worked in different buildings. While the first has nothing to do with anything, the second makes sense. DeGeneres has an easygoing, highly accessible persona, and as she discussed in her terrific 2017 comedy special, this can make life a bit difficult. Especially, one imagines, for a woman at the head of a very high-profile and lucrative business that involves hundreds of people waiting in a sweltering parking garage for the chance to see her show live each and every day. Often with 'We love you, Ellen' signs." ALSO: Wendy Williams calls out DeGeneres for being ignorant of toxic workplace allegations: “We all know people who have worked there, including people here.”

[TMC]

Originally Posted by JamesG

"The Ellen DeGeneres Show" To End after 19 Seasons
by Nellie Andreeva
May 12, 2021


At the end of a rocky 2020-21 season, following a toxic workplace environment controversy and amid declining ratings, Ellen DeGeneres is ending her daytime talk show.

DeGeneres’ current contract takes "The Ellen DeGeneres Show" through the upcoming 2021-2022 season, the show’s 19th, and it will now be the program’s final chapter



The Daily Mail, which broke the news early Wednesday morning, thwarted DeGeneres’ and the show’s producer Warner Bros.’ plans of announcing the news on their own terms.

DeGeneres will speak about the pending end of her daytime talker in the opening monologue she will be taping later today.

https://deadline.com/2021/05/the-ell...ns-1234754647/

The Kelly Clarkson Show to take over The Ellen DeGeneres Show’s timeslot in fall 2022 on NBC stations

The move makes sense for NBC Universal, which produces and distributes Kelly Clarkson’s daytime talk show, since Ellen DeGeneres’ talk show is mostly on NBC stations. “We look forward to Ellen DeGeneres’ 19th season paired with Kelly Clarkson for what is sure to be a blockbuster year. By 2022, The Kelly Clarkson Show will be the star of our daytime entertainment schedules and an asset to our early afternoon newscasts,” says Valari Staab, president of NBCUniversal Local. As The Wrap notes, the move also sets up The Kelly Clarkson Show to be used as a launch pad for a potential daytime newcomer next year, since a new show has to fill the Ellen void.

Kelly Clarkson on taking over The Ellen DeGeneres Show timeslot: “I’m incredibly mind-blown"

Clarkson posted a video to Twitter reacting to the news that The Kelly Clarkson Show will inherit Ellen DeGeneres' timeslot on NBC stations after The Ellen DeGeneres Show ends in 2022. "I’m so excited for our staff and crew and band, everybody that’s been working so hard to be recognized by the Academy for all the Emmy nominations," she said. "Life, yeah, it’s amazing for us right now and we’re very, very happy."

[TMC]

Ellen DeGeneres recalls being part of a package deal with Sharon Osbourne's talk show: "I was the side dish of coleslaw to Sharon’s main dish of barbeque chicken"

DeGeneres tells The Advocate how there was hesitancy over the launch of a broadcast daytime talk show hosted by a lesbian. So her talk show was sold in 2003 with The Sharon Osbourne Show -- which was canceled after one season -- in wake of Sharon Osbourne's popularity with MTV's The Osbournes. “I think we only had about three affiliates that picked it up," says DeGeneres. A lot of decision-makers around the country weren’t wild about me, out Ellen, being on their stations,” she points out. “As a matter of fact, the distributors of the show were really trying to sell the Sharon Osbourne show too, so they tried to sell us as a package deal. However, I was the side dish of coleslaw to Sharon’s main dish of barbeque chicken. Then, once my show aired, it started to become popular, which surprised everyone, and as the show took off it gave me more of an opportunity to be myself.” DeGeneres explains that when the show started, there were strict conditions for her to follow: “I couldn’t talk about Portia (de Rossi). I couldn’t say the word ‘we’ since that would imply there was someone special in my life. They told me to dress a certain way — no jeans, for example. I guess jeans were considered gay? Oh, and I couldn’t say that word — ‘gay.’ I wasn’t happy about it, so if the situation changed with the show, I knew I’d have some power to change the show.”

[TMC]

With her daytime talk show, Ellen DeGeneres "became everyone and no one all at once"

The Ellen DeGeneres Show, which ended its 19-year run on Thursday, transformed DeGeneres into an "Everywoman," an approach that worked its magic but came at a cost, says Robyn Bahr. "In the words of Stephen Sondheim, 'Nice is different than good,'" says Bahr. "DeGeneres has always straddled the line between light and dark, between antic fun and snappish charisma. After all, what comedian doesn’t have a fundamental mean streak? And what comedian doesn’t eventually become entrapped by their own persona? Rosie O’Donnell, a former daytime talk show giant in her own right, spent the 1990s as, among other things, a kid-friendly celebrity until she was felled by her own venom, losing the public’s trust once she showed us what was really behind her nurturing facade. John Mulaney, a ventriloquist’s dummy of a stand-up known for his jokes about his domestic life and humble upbringing, lost his Nice Guy reputation last year when he went to rehab, divorced his wife and impregnated Olivia Munn. No one, not even someone who is paid to make us laugh, can be wholesome or lovable all the time. DeGeneres’ name will forever be marred by rumors and exposés about the toxic work environments she has helmed over the years. Her Faustian bargain — to hide her more complex nature in plain sight while she played everyone’s favorite sweater vest-clad relative — eventually cost her in the end. Critics claim she cozied up to controversial figures to maintain her 'everyone gets a fair shot' centrist image. Nah. This was just a rich and powerful celeb who sided with other rich and powerful celebs because how could we, the plebs, possibly understand their lives? I wonder if she felt any relief when her empire started to crumble. Who can maintain a public guise for that long without feeling the itch to take off the mask once and for all?"

ALSO:

• The Ellen DeGeneres Show finale aggressively spotlighted Ellen DeGeneres’ kindness and impact on the world -- and ignored all of her controversies: "It’s in that muddy space that the Ellen finale struggled to produce a squeaky-clean final episode, the kind of earnest tribute that an institution like this show is typically given without an asterisk accounting for the complicated conversations surrounding its star," says Kevin Fallon. "If anything, the greatest service Thursday’s episode provided was that it was a powerful reminder of how complicated those conversations are. We take for granted what an omnipresent, major celebrity DeGeneres has become—so prominent as to, according to those allegations, morph into quite the diva. It’s easy to forget how unlikely it is that we’re even at a place of having these debates about her and her show."
• DeGeneres' final shows avoided taking a stand against the recent wave of anti-LGBTQ legislation: In her final monologue, DeGeneres pointed out how far we've come in that she can say "gay" on her show. As Melanie McFarland notes, "this episode was recorded on April 28, a full month after Florida's governor Ron DeSantis signed the 'Parental Rights in Education' bill, better known as 'Don't Say Gay,' into law. But DeGeneres' monologue doesn't specifically mention this or any other anti-gay, anti-transgender legislation slithering its way through state legislatures. There's the very real possibility that the conservative-skewing Supreme Court may overturn the legalization of same-sex marriage too, but there was no mention of that either. When DeGeneres points out that she says 'wife' all the time, the camera simply panned over to show her glamorous spouse Portia de Rossi warmly smiling and nodding as the people around her applaud this accomplishment." McFarland also notes how DeGeneres infamously sided with Kevin Hart in early 2019 over his past anti-gay jokes that surfaced when he was tapped to host the Oscars. "Three years later," McFarland says, "DeGeneres ends her show in another moment of drastically higher stakes for LGBTQ+ people. Unfortunately, by talking her way around taking a stand against the heightening wave of anti-gay bigotry, she leaves us with the impression of siding with the famous and powerful over people who might benefit from an influential demonstration of kindness."
• Ellen DeGeneres did not “betray” queer people, but her downfall began with her defense of Kevin Hart: The January 2019 interview, coming after a month after Hart stepped down because he declined to apologize for his past use of anti-gay jokes "might be more striking for what it says about DeGeneres than what it says about Hart: Slipping with breathtaking, almost comic alacrity between performance and personality, the talk-show host’s defense of her guest hinged not on his decency, his regret, even their friendship, but on... his performance in the movie The Upside," says Matt Brennan. "'His movie is so amazing,' she gushed, by way of defending Hart. The Upside is so incredible. He is so incredible. I’ve seen it twice.' To mistake a fellow celebrity’s role in a $100-million tearjerker for moral rectitude is a peculiarly Hollywood brand of category error; it’s as if DeGeneres’ muscle memory for the promotional interview could not adjust to the demands of the moment." Brennan adds: "On neither occasion did she address the merits of the case; indeed, the logic of her conversation with Hart is tortured to the point of incoherence, going so far as to proclaim that his 'right' — to host the Oscars — has been violated...Watching the interview now, it’s easier to see that her problem is not merely the tension between the smiling host of 'be kind to everyone' fame and the celebrity once described in a viral tweet thread as 'notoriously one of the meanest people alive.' It is also, more profoundly, the air of entitlement that leads a trailblazer of DeGeneres’ stature to sound the same notes a network executive once might have about a lesbian comedian coming out on TV."
• The end of Ellen coincides with the end of our buying into a kind of hollow virtue-signaling from celebrities: "What do we make of something that started out as a revolutionary program — an openly queer woman beaming into nearly every home in America on every afternoon in the early aughts, becoming a universally beloved figure — and ended as an outdated symbol of the soullessness of the celebrity façade?" asks Brandon Yu, adding: "This kind of ambivalent reputation that Ellen leaves with is firstly another example of a trite lesson that, particularly in our era of parasocial relationship PSAs, is nevertheless ever-relevant: a public persona is and always will be a construct, that in some cases is in direct opposition with the real-life person and ultimately does not actually care about you, the consumer, or about being kind to you. But also, the conclusion of Ellen and the downfall of her happy-dancing legacy signals another larger, more abstract shift in the last couple of years. Her empty platitude of telling others to just be nice to each other now reads not only as false, but insultingly simplistic and out-of-touch in the same way that Gal Gadot & Co.’s 'Imagine' video (which, interestingly enough, occurred literally two days after the initial Ellen Twitter thread was first posted) registered at the start of the pandemic."
• The Ellen DeGeneres Show's "prestige" faded in the past two years: A prominent publicist anonymously tells Buzzfeed News' Krystie Lee Yandoli -- who broke the news of The Ellen Show's toxic workplace in summer 2020 -- that "once upon a time, in the heyday of Ellen, that show was a career-defining booking for certain talent on the up and up, talent that were really trying to be a part of Hollywood in a big way. It was the daytime booking to get, and oftentimes led to late-night show opportunities and magazine covers. You would prioritize that because it was so meaningful and was so widely syndicated; it was a different level than booking the Today show or Good Morning America. There was something about it that felt really premium that felt like you’d broken through and made it.” But in the last two years,, the publicist says DeGeneres’ “prestige wore off very quickly, adding: “People don’t want to be associated with everything that emerged. People are being hyperaware of the alliances they build in this business, and it’s hard to sort of trade off and sell out, for lack of better words, a booking with a terrible person or someone perceived to be a terrible person,” they said, adding that celebrities had also become hesitant due to the potential for awkward interviews, citing the 2019 (Dakota) Johnson exchange."
• DeGeneres should now embrace being mean: "DeGeneres’s most direct road back to America’s good graces might be the most counterintuitive one: leaning into the mean," says Inkoo Kang. "Not in every direction, of course; allegedly kicking those beneath her is what got her in hot water in the first place. At a certain point, Ellen became arguably more famous and powerful than most of the celebrities she interviewed, making her pranks or intrusive questions uncomfortable. But re-watch her monologue as the host of the 2014 Oscars, when she roasts the A-listers in the audience, and it’s easy to admire how well she deploys her aw-shucks demeanor and killer comic instincts in service of punching up. DeGeneres will be back. We may never think of her as one of us again, if we ever really did. But she of all people knows that we might like her more if she didn’t try so hard to be something she’s not."
• DeGeneres' impact on TV remains unclear: "It’s apparent that her daily presence on television helped normalize queer people; it feels less certain that there will ever be a show quite like hers again — one that feels quite so flat in its embrace of celebrity as a good in and of itself," says Daniel D'Addario. "Going forward, we will be without Ellen DeGeneres’ perspective — but that’s OK. We didn’t have much of it, other than a general sense that kindness is good, for the past 19 years."
• Looking back at The Ellen DeGeneres Show's worst moments: Defending her friendship with George W. Bush, "every single prank," grilling Taylor Swift about her exes, introducing Charlie Puth to the world and giving Damn Daniel a platform are among DeGeneres' worst offenses, according to Gawker.

[TMC]

From Jimmy Fallon to Ellen DeGeneres, why are talk shows such hotbeds of toxic workplace allegations?